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My personal philosophy is that all questions should follow a very specific format: 1. I am attempting to solve problem X 2. I took steps A, B, C 3. I expecte

My personal philosophy is that all questions should follow a very specific format: 1. I am attempting to solve problem X 2. I took steps A, B, C 3. I expected result Y 4. I instead encountered result Z I'm not familiar enough with Stack Overflow to know whether this is already a feature, but I'd love to see an enforced question format like the above, or something in the ballpark. Like a multi-input form that doesn't allow you to submit unless you fill in each field.

jbay808 6y ago
Do you have to be attempting to solve a problem in order to have a question worthy of asking? And if I'm attempting to solve a different problem, but have to ask the same question, will answers tailored to the problem that you're solving be helpful to me? If not, can I ask the same question without it being closed as a duplicate?
- bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
  Breaking from that format should require reputation — something small like 100 rep so that newbies are forced to use it
captain_price7 6y ago
> all questions should follow a very specific format The format is good enough, but I really dislike the idea of enforcing it for every question. As a top comment suggested, some of the most interesting questions in SO are sort of open-ended. Most of my questions and answers there (~3.5k reputation) violate your format.
- pas 6y ago
  Sure, but those are the exceptions. They are fine (or they should be), after all there's enough space for both. OP is complaining (not without merit) about the typical X Y questions, that are hard to answer, because there's a very specific question, but very little actual context that would help creative solutions. This leads to boring brute-force hackish answers. At best.
dorgo 6y ago
1. I attempted to solve problem X 2. I found out that algorithm Y solves X 3. I expected to find an implementation of Y in langauge Z on stackoverflow 4. I encountered no usefull implementations and posted my implementation instead

jbay808 6y ago

Do you have to be attempting to solve a problem in order to have a question worthy of asking? And if I'm attempting to solve a different problem, but have to ask the same question, will answers tailored to the problem that you're solving be helpful to me? If not, can I ask the same question without it being closed as a duplicate?

bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
Breaking from that format should require reputation — something small like 100 rep so that newbies are forced to use it

captain_price7 6y ago

> all questions should follow a very specific format The format is good enough, but I really dislike the idea of enforcing it for every question. As a top comment suggested, some of the most interesting questions in SO are sort of open-ended. Most of my questions and answers there (~3.5k reputation) violate your format.

pas 6y ago
Sure, but those are the exceptions. They are fine (or they should be), after all there's enough space for both. OP is complaining (not without merit) about the typical X Y questions, that are hard to answer, because there's a very specific question, but very little actual context that would help creative solutions. This leads to boring brute-force hackish answers. At best.

dorgo 6y ago

1. I attempted to solve problem X 2. I found out that algorithm Y solves X 3. I expected to find an implementation of Y in langauge Z on stackoverflow 4. I encountered no usefull implementations and posted my implementation instead